Why Is Aedes aegypti Moving South in South America?

Lucas Ernesto Alonso, Victoria Romeo Aznar and Hernán Gustavo Solari ()
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Lucas Ernesto Alonso: Instituto de Investigaciones en Energía No Convencional (INENCO), UNSa-CONICET, Salta 4400, Argentina
Victoria Romeo Aznar: Instituto de Ecología, Genética y Evolución de Buenos Aires (IEGEBA), UBA-CONICET and Departamento de Ecología, Genética y Evolución, FCEN-UBA, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires 1428, Argentina
Hernán Gustavo Solari: Inistituto de Física de Buenos Aires (IFIBA), UBA-CONICET and Departmento de Física, FCEN-UBA, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires 1428, Argentina

Mathematics, 2022, vol. 10, issue 23, 1-22

Abstract: Colonies of Aedes aegypti have been reported at increasingly southern locations. Is this feature a manifestation of climate change or the result of the mosquito’s adaptation? Answering the question requires the testing and comparison of results produced under different, competing, hypotheses. We address the problem using “AedesBA”, a detailed model of the mosquito Aedes aegypti that has been under development for about 20 years. The aim of the model is to promote understanding. We incorporate the recently discovered biological behavior of this mosquito: diapause. Namely, this is the laying of resistance eggs when the day light shortens, entering into the unfavorable season for reproduction in temperate climates, as described from laboratory experiments. When the model is challenged to answer the questions posed, it suggests that climate change, as experienced during the time of the field records, does not explain the observations. Furthermore, the standard climate change argument does not support a detailed analysis. In contrast, we find that while diapause is not expected to be a trait that is selected by natural conditions in a subtropical climate (simulations for Resistencia, AR), within temperate climates such as in Buenos Aires city (AR), there is pressure favoring the selection of the trait. As we move southward (the cities of Dolores, Azul, Tandil, and Mar del Plata), the pressure increases, while the probability of Aedes aegypti to become established in them decreases, being in accordance with the field observations. The model shows in addition that the field-observable effects of diapause depend on weather variables, especially precipitation, and the dynamics of the nutritional resources in the breeding sites.

Keywords: stochastic model; ecology; vector; complexity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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